It _is_ a magnificent church--the most elaborately decorated, I believe, in all Europe. Grand Master John L'Eveque de la Cassar, at his own expense, put up the building, and all Europe contributed to its wealth and splendor. Its spacious floor is one vast mosaic of memorial tablets to dead heroes. There are four hundred richly inlaid slabs, each bearing a coat of arms and inscriptions in colors. They are wonderfully beautiful; no other church in the world has such a floor. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was a greater vandal than a soldier, allowed his troops to rifle St. John's when he took possession of Malta in 1798. But there are riches enough there now and apparently Napoleon did not deface the edifice itself.
The upper part of the Cathedral can only be comprehended in the single word "gorgeous." To attempt to put into sentences any impressions of its lavish ceiling and decorations and furnishings would be to cheapen a thing which, though ornate, is not cheap and does not look so. There are paintings by Correggio and other Italian masters, and rare sacred statuary, and there is a solid silver altar rail which Napoleon did not carry off because a thoughtful priest quickly gave it a coat of lampblack when he heard the soldiers coming.
The original keys of Jerusalem and several other holy places are said to be in one of the chapels, and in another is a thorn from the Saviour's crown, the stones with which St. Stephen was martyred, and some apostolic bones. These things are as likely to be here as anywhere, and one of the right hands of John the Baptist, encased in a gold glove, was here when Napoleon came. Napoleon took up the hand and slipped off a magnificent diamond ring from one of the fingers. Then he slipped the ring on his own finger and tossed the hand aside.
They hate the memory of Napoleon in Malta to this day.
The ceiling of the church is a mass of gold and color, and there are chapels along the sides, each trying to outdo the next in splendor. I am going to stop description right here, for I could do nothing with the details.
I have mentioned that services were in progress, but it did not seem to interfere with our sight-seeing. It would in America, but it doesn't in Malta. There was chanting around the altar, and there were worshippers kneeling all about, but our guide led us among them and over them as if they had not existed. It seemed curious to us that he could do this, that we could follow him unmolested. We tried to get up some feeling of delicacy in the matter, and to make some show of reluctance, but he led us and drove us along relentlessly, and did not seem to fear the consequences.